Gas Powered ends Age of Empires Online support

Gas Powered Games will not be adding any new content to Age of Empires Online after its final content update.

In a frank blog post from the Redmond developer, it explains that a small amount of content is scheduled to be released in a few weeks time for the free-to-play game, but that’s it. There will be no further content after that.

Despite this, the game will still be playable with all six civilizations, and its community team will continue to offer customer support.

Gas Powered puts its decision not to continue updating the game down to the huge cost of developing and maintaining it: “Creating top-tier content, as we have been for the last year and a half, is very expensive – too expensive to maintain for long, as it turns out. We can no longer afford to keep creating it. AOEO already has a very large amount of high-quality, hand-crafted entertainment, and adding more is no longer cost-effective.”

Gas Powered Games is an independent developer behind real-time strategy series Supreme Commander and the role-playing series Dungeon Siege. Since 2010, it is reported to have been working on a new RTS, Kings and Castles.

By relieving itself of support for AOEO, Gas Powered may be returning to this project or something else. But we should soon find out, as a clock is counting down to the reveal of a new game, simply known as Project W, on its website.

The Age of Empires franchise is owned by Microsoft, so there is a possibility that another developer may yet be assigned to create new content for AOEO or build a new title.